1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic information delivery system, and particularly, to an Internet/Intranet-based reporting, presentation, and notification system for customers requesting information from remotely located back-end servers of telecommunications service entities via the World Wide Web (Web).
2. Background Art
Major telecommunications service entities presently provide for the presentation and dissemination of customer account and network management information to their customers predominantly through a Windows-based graphical user interface resident on a personal computer. Typically, service entity customers are enabled to directly dial-up, e.g., via a modem, or alternately, via dedicated communication lines, e.g., ISDN, T-1, etc., to the entity""s mainframe applications, and initiate the generation of reports of their requested account information through the graphical user interface. The report requests initiated by the customer are processed by the entity""s legacy applications, which retrieve the requested customer""s information from one or more databases, and process and format the information for downloading to the client""s reporting graphical user interface.
The telecommunications service providers offer many different services which have been developed independently over time, and which operate on many different operating platforms. For instance, MCI""s Service View platform (xe2x80x9cMSVxe2x80x9d) provides for the generation of toll free network management data, priced call detail or xe2x80x9cPerspectivexe2x80x9d data for usage analysis and trending, and unpriced call detail or real-time xe2x80x9cTrafficViewxe2x80x9d data each of which requires a different reporting mechanism due to the nature of the data being presented and the legacy application which generates it. For example, much of the customers xe2x80x9cPerspectivexe2x80x9d data is provided on a CD-ROM media and shipped to the customer, usually on a monthly basis, and requires extensive client-side processing to utilize the data. This cuts down on computing resources as the customer requires a dedicated application and graphical user interface to process this type of data. Furthermore, such systems do not readily provide for the scheduling of periodic or ad hoc xe2x80x9cone-shotxe2x80x9d reports.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide an Internet/Intranet World Wide Web (Web)-based reporting system that provides a common graphical user interface enabling both report requesting, customizing and viewing of various types of data from different server applications.
It would also be highly desirable that this reporting paradigm be asynchronous; that is, the customer may request a report, and then continue using the system or other applications on the workstation while the report is processed at the server. When the report is completed, the server deposits the report results into an inbox, and notification appears in a message center at the client terminal. At any point thereafter, at the customer""s convenience, the report may be downloaded and viewed, saved, etc. This paradigm preserves the responsiveness of the platform and emphasizes the customer""s control of the system.
The inbox may be used as a general conduit for messages to the customer; news of available upgrades, problems with the servers, problems with report requests, promotional announcements, product offerings, etc. Messages may remain in the customer""s inbox until they are deleted by the customer, or expired after a predetermined period.
Although this paradigm is very much like e-mail, and the implementation may share many e-mail like characteristics, such as xe2x80x9cstore-and-forwardxe2x80x9d reporting and message forwarding architecture, the actual e-mail SMTP protocol cannot support many of the features required by the Web-based reporting and messaging system such as concurrent processing and handling of large data storage as the back-end repository and recoverable downloads to the client platform. Therefore, it would be highly desirable to provide an inbox client/server system having a capability to handle multithreading for high-priority messages, guaranteed delivery, and recoverable downloads.
Accordingly, to overcome the above shortcomings, the present invention provides an Internet/Intranet World Wide Web (Web)-based centralized common interface repository system for event notifications and report outputs generated by different server applications and/or application platforms.
The present invention further provides a common graphical user interface to a customer for viewing and receiving the report outputs and the event notifications for all application services. In addition, the present invention provides an Internet/Intranet Web-based information delivery system infrastructure capable of providing for the secure initiation, acquisition, and presentation of information from any customer computer platform having a Web browser.
The present invention further provides an Internet/Intranet Web-based client-server communications infrastructure capable of transmitting and receiving multiple messages simultaneously over a plurality of secure communications links. With this mechanism, a high priority message may be communicated to a customer in real time, even when a duration-intensive download of a large file is taking place, for example.
Further yet, the present invention provides a well-organized and efficiently accessible directory structure for storing different application servers and/or application platform information in a central Intranet/Intranet repository system. For example, each application utilizing the inbox system may have its own predetermined directory space in which to place its data.
For attaining the above functionalities, the present invention includes a client browser application located at the client workstation. The client browser application enables an interactive web-based communications with the inbox system and provides an integrated interface to the one or more enterprise application services. A customer may access the inbox system with an inbox client application, which is typically launched by the client browser application.
The present invention also includes at least one secure server for managing client sessions over the Internet/Intranet network. The secure server supports secure socket connections enabling encrypted communications between the client browser application and the secure server. At the enterprise side, the application servers associated with different services typically generate customer specific data and place the data in the inbox server. The inbox server stores and maintains the customer specific data. The data includes report data and notification data received from the enterprise application servers, and also a metadata description of the report data. The metadata typically represents report standards and options for customizing the report standards. The report data and the metadata associated with the report data may be downloaded to the client browser application via the secure server for generation of reports according to the metatdata description. The reports may then be presented to the customer at the client workstation. The inbox server also accepts news and information data other than reports from the various enterprise application services. The news and additional information may then be retrieved by the customer via the inbox client application at the client workstation.
Further benefits and advantages of the invention will become apparent from a consideration of the following detailed description.